Thanksgiving can be a lot, between food prep, family and cleaning. There aren’t many convenient, affordable ways to celebrate with the traditional fixings.
However, there is a low-cost feast available at a place you might not expect: the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
The museum's kitchen crew has been working for days on its annual Thanksgiving meal, which costs $15 per diner and is available with or without admission.
The museum’s kitchen staff will prepare some 64 turkeys, pound upon pound of garlic mashed potatoes and, according to executive chef Simone Guidry, an "interpretation of a casserole,” among other dishes.
“Because we're open on Thanksgiving and we have so many staff and volunteers that are here, I think it does provide a space for community during that time,” Guidry said. “They can have that experience here at work — it just makes everybody feel welcome and included.”
The museum is open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Prep for the big meal isn’t too different from the kitchen’s day-to-day work — with some exceptions.
“We have a ton of catering and parties here with special menus and a huge catering menu. So we kind of have our prep system down,” she said. But Thanksgiving is special.
“When the aromas are in the kitchen you can kind of feel everybody's like, ‘Oh, it's the holidays’ and they get to be more festive or they get in their festive mood,” Guidry added.
There’s also the question of ordering and cooking more than five dozen birds.
“We'll get them in, they'll be frozen. We'll have to store them and then thaw them and start processing them,” she said. “We roast them, golden brown, delicious.”
The kitchen started preparation more than a week before the holiday, knowing they would likely serve more than 200 meals on the big day.
“Then we got to start chopping herbs for stuffing and celery, carrot, onion. We got to peel potatoes, roast some garlic, get the cubes of butter ready and the heavy cream for the sweet potatoes,” she said. ”And we have a lovely lady in pastry that'll work on the pumpkin pie filling. And of course the green beans and the cranberry sauce, it starts smelling really good in the kitchen when we start making all of that.”
The DMNS kitchen is open year-round and features a salad bar and a range of cuisine. Occasionally, the staff will throw in seasonal items — clover and leprechaun decorations for St. Patrick’s Day or rainbow cupcakes for National Coming Out Day.
Thanksgiving, however, is the only holiday where the kitchen goes all out. The museum has been offering its feast since before Guidry's time as executive chef, but it’s a tradition she is happy to uphold. While she enjoys the smells and the food, she said she most loves the intangibles the Thanksgiving dinner brings to the table.
“I think people get excited about it,” she said. “At least the few people that know about it and don't work here.”
And for those who don’t like Thanksgiving food, the museum will keep at least one staple on the menu. “We also have pizza for those that are not really into the turkey thing,” Guidry said.
